In the Endless Backyard, Part 5

A goat race. Your brother hanging onto
the pocket of your pink shorts. World's
Largest Horse. Endless shrieking, coming

near but never arriving. World's smallest
dog. Smeared glass boxes, cracked, with
bones inside. The hat worn by Jesse James.

Shake the hand of the man made of rubber.
Two liter cup of orange soda and all
the popcorn you can eat. A midget who

won't look at you sitting at a target.
A horse fly shining in your brother's hair.
A truckfull of fathers smoking. A man

swearing as he tears off the head
of a stuffed zebra. Your heel in a puddle
of beer and piss in the elephant tent. A tiny

elephant with a half-closed eye. The tickle
of a trunk, slow on your palm. Bet on number
9, the loudspeaker says, lucky number 9.

3 dreams


It is winter and we are skiing. I am not burning as quickly as usual. You put your hand over my eyes as if to shield me from the sun.


It is winter, but at the carnival everyone is wearing shorts and pink tank tops. I wonder if I'm the only one who can feel the cold. I watch a girl watch her snow cone drip onto her toes. Her toes turn blue and start to expand.


It is not winter, or it is winter, but not very cold. The sun is missing from the sky; everything is a sort of swirled elephant or donkey gray. You are holding a sleeping cat on a park bench. The cat's head droops over your arm as if he has no muscles, or is made of rubber. Somewhere in a tree a bird makes a sound like a small cat.

Reunion, II
after Kiki Smith

all ooze and whimper, they smile
with broken teeth and ask to hold

our hands, they sprout wings and
descend from trees, spiral pencil

marks ascending their necks,
long nails elaborate as jewelry;

in our pocket books, in our rearview
mirrors, they meet our eyes, one pupil

one degree off, one pupil a drowsy
cat's; their souls pour onto paper

like spilt tea onto napkins; as they
claw beneath our collars in some

strange neighbor's kitchen, we are so
embarrassed, we apologize, apologize

My Little Pony


and I float through the open
door, crash into the river

a mouthful of bright noise
and slaughter

the fisherman have brand new
blue nylon nets and they

throw us back once
they realize we don’t have

pearls tucked in our cheeks
or taped between our toes

we are entirely without jewels,
featherless as a newborn pig

I’ve taught him to canter
in five different languages

but something’s changing
in our headwounds, new
growth, sharp teeth

Spontaneous Generation


Ginger tea, scraped from some
humming clump at the bottom

of a glass jar. Hot. Yellow.
Toothy. It stings the palate,

tastes of matted weeds and honey.
An exotic frog could emerge

from such muck, sticking toe
by tentative toe to cardboard

in a humid pet store. Or some-
thing the color of a jewel,

sticky, brightly four-eyed,
beating against the glass

like a drunken engine, some
shining, six-legged god.

Wilderness

Go to sleep, I whisper to my brother next to me
in the hammock, go to sleep. He keeps jerking

and fussing; he whines ants are crawling in his ears.
I pinch him again. His legs against mine feel sticky

and hot, like he's covered in piss-scented honey.
He rolls over onto my hair, his mouth full of

small sleeping moans. I twist my head away.
I put my fingers over the nape of his small brown

neck and hum, waiting to pinch -- sometimes,
I just like the sound of his shriek. Every few

minutes, branches break in the distance, as if
something heavy is falling and picking itself up.

I've been sick and busy, and sick of being busy, still with the three ginormous papers hanging over my head, reaching down occasionaly to slap me on the side of my head, near the ear, where it hurts.

Here's a little thing:

Excerpted from an Encyclopedia of Nocturnal Marsupials

This tiny bearole (in the photo, no larger than a child’s wooden leg) is difficult to take on walks. Excessively restless, it often jumps out of its stall. Bars can sometimes limit the activities of this tiny animal. Sometimes the beast can be tied down. Urban dwellers prefer the tiny marsupials that are produced in plastic factories. Often manufactured without head or limbs, these beasts are quite docile. All the marsupials are available in different skin tones.

Bearoles are rarely seen in the wild. When spotted, they tend to make short sharp cries and scamper like spiders over blades of quivering grass. On at least two occasions, weak and dehydrated wild bearoles have been found stuck to a tree trunk by clots of rotting honey. This tiny beast is addicted to honey, up to and including its sticky death. For this reason, Dr. Geertzmantal, the Swedish botanist who accidentally discovered the bearole, was thought to have named the tiny animal after a bear, although some ethnographers insist the name comes from its enormous bear-like paws. The road to obtaining an official Latin name is a long one -- filled with pitfalls and hurdles. The bearole’s constant escapes have not endeared it to the Latin name-makers, with their dust allergies and fear of large plants. Rumors that the bearole tongue delivers a hallucinatory poison have never been substantiated.